Q&A: ISU hosts daily activities for Student Athlete Mental Health Week
WGLT-FM
Mental health may not always be top of mind for collegiate athletes who juggle classes, training and games, but it’s important to maintain balance.
The National Collegiate Association of Athletes [NCAA] requires member schools to provide athletes mental health support, and Hilinski’s Hope Foundation highlights athlete wellness annually through its dedicated Student Athlete Mental Health Week. Hilinski's Hope is named after Tyler Hilinski, a former Washington State University student and football player who died by suicide in 2018.
This year, Student Athlete Mental Health Week runs from Oct. 5 through Oct. 12, and Illinois State University is one of more than 165 universities participating with a week’s worth of events. It's joined the movement in years past as well.
WGLT spoke to ISU Athletics embedded counselor Lindsay Maxson, who helped plan the university's programming for the week.
WGLT: What is Student Athlete Mental Health Week about?
Maxson: Essentially, this week is all about destigmatizing mental health services for student athletes and just generally, raising awareness of suicide prevention.
What are some of the events that you have planned for Student Athlete Mental Health Week? And what did you really have in mind when you were crafting those specific events?
We just wanted to remind student athletes that we really care about their overall mental health and well being, so we have a variety of different events going on throughout the course of the week to just help them and have them enjoy participating. One example is Wellness Wednesday, where we're going to be partnering with Campus Recreation so they can facilitate a restorative yoga session for our student athletes. That's really exciting. We also are going to have our Illinois State University Police Department therapy dog come into the athletic study center so student athletes can just visit with the therapy dog and just kind of reduce stress.
My understanding is those two events are athlete-specific, which makes sense; it's Student Athlete Mental Health Week. But are there any events that are going on that members of the public can participate in?
Definitely. So on Friday, Oct. 11, we are inviting all of our fans out to CEFCU Arena at 6 p.m. to support our women's volleyball team in their mental health awareness game versus Indiana State University. We are also going to have a pop-up shop from Stay Another Day, which is a local store in Bloomington that sells mental health awareness-specific merchandise. And then also on Saturday, Oct. 12, we have our mental health awareness football game at 12 p.m. at Hancock Stadium.
Mental health struggles are going to continue beyond Oct. 12, so what are some of the other things that you and the other folks within ISU Athletics are practicing or planning to continue with student athletes' mental health journeys and upkeep?
In partnership with the Student Counseling department at Illinois State University, we're continuously providing both individualized and group counseling services for our student athletes. Very commonly within this population, student athletes will suffer from signs or symptoms of depression as well as generalized anxiety, and they're also at an increased risk of developing substance use disorders as well as eating concerns. So those are some of the topics or the themes that we really try to assess and address and treat, and we are encouraging student athletes to reach out for support and services if and when necessary.
